Word: brabeck
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Behind the scenes, Brabeck is working to reshape Nestle's traditional decentralized management. He wants to replace the jumble of conflicting practices within the company's far-flung divisions--in areas from accounting to purchasing--with a unified system aimed at better leveraging Nestle's worldwide scale...
...typical of Brabeck that these moves, while significant, aren't billed as any kind of revolution. Brabeck has spent his entire professional life at Nestle, working his way up from lowly ice-cream salesman, and he's respectful of the 136-year-old company's traditions. Just as in the mountains, he moves with care. "Peter Brabeck lives life to the full, but he's circumspect," says Vreni Spoerry, 64, a nonexecutive Nestle director for the past decade. "He's good at anticipating what might happen and seeing where the risks lurk...
...Dutchman, a German, a Mexican, two Spaniards and a Swede. Yet its corporate culture remains firmly grounded in the Swiss tradition, favoring modesty and consensual change over American-style brashness. Joe Weller, 57, the head of Nestle USA, calls it a "global company with a Germanic personality." And Brabeck nurtures "the Nestle spirit," even co-writing a nine-page brochure that tries to explain it. "Nestle people do not show off" is one definition. Another: "Nestle is skeptical of short-term fads and self-appointed gurus...
...result is that for all his ambition to usher in a new era of growth, Brabeck is not about to follow the radical--and financially successful--example of one of Nestle's main rivals, the Anglo-Dutch Unilever group. Unilever has taken a machete to its operations over the past three years, cutting the number of its brands by half to focus on 400 key products and shutting 83 of its 250 manufacturing facilities. Those efforts have widened its operating margins by 45%, and its earnings per share were up 27% last year, despite the sluggish economy. During Brabeck...
...Brabeck pooh-poohs the notion that a company should focus tightly on its core competency. Nestle's big challenge, he says, "is that we have to be able to learn how to get operational efficiency with a relatively complex business structure. This is what I think real management is all about. The other thing is much too easy." Rather than narrow its focus, he believes that a well-managed and flexibly organized consumer-goods company can sell dog food and ice cream--as well as coffee, water and candy--and gain advantages in marketing, purchasing and distribution over more specialized...